Video from 2019. The rest of the series can be found scattered around in this playlist.
"A rare copy of the medieval manuscript Invectives Against the Sect of Waldensians, which, alongside the later published Malleus Maleficarum, detailed how to recognize, question, torture and burn witches, is possibly being resurrected at the University of Alberta. The originally mis-catalogued book is one of only four copies in the world, with the other three housed in libraries in France, Brussels, and Oxford, and is a stunning historical artifact." Source: The Malleusmaleficarum (2012).
Note: Technically, the Waldensians were proto-Protestant Christians, not witches, but the distinction didn't matter to the author of Invectives:
"The Waldensians were medieval heretics who disavowed the power of the priests and allowed women to preach. But for the author of this book, Dominican inquisitor Johannes Tinctor, 'Waldensian' was a synonym for 'witch'."
Many of the Waldensian doctrines sound perfectly reasonable, but they challenged the Catholic church's authority and suffered really horrendous persecution for centuries as a result. For instance, the massacre described in the video below "became known as the Piedmont Easter. An estimate of some 1,700 Waldensians were slaughtered; the massacre was so brutal it aroused indignation throughout Europe." (Wikipedia)
During the medieval period, the trade in holy relics was a lucrative and widespread racket operated by the Catholic church:
"Throughout the Middle Ages, Europe hosted a thriving trade in holy relics. But many of the relics, if not all of them, were fake." Source: The Museum of Hoaxes.
"The relics collected and worshiped by medieval Europeans ranged from the mundane to the truly bizarre. Bones or body parts of saints and martyrs were always in high demand. One church proudly displayed the brain of St. Peter until the relic was accidentally moved and revealed to be a piece of pumice stone."
Christians didn't invent the worship of relics, however. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised), "the practice goes back at least to the Geometric period [in Greece 900-700 BC], persisted through antiquity, and has survived within the Catholic and Orthodox churches."
Relics in ancient Greece were commonly associated with hero cults and they were certainly just as fraudulent as the medieval Christian variety. According to the OCD, "there are numerous examples of relics, which fall into three main categories: first, those put into a certain place on purpose and subsequently worshiped there; second, those brought from one place to another for worship at the latter; third, those found by chance, given an identity, and venerated."
The relics of heroes and saints were thought to be "imbued with the power to benefit their possessor." (OCD) According to A History of the Middle Ages, 300-1500, by John M. Riddle, "the [medieval] age was devoted to the cults of the saints, wherein 'numinous' power was believed to be acquired by veneration of a specific saint, mainly by touching or kissing the saint's physical relic." (p 238)
This is clear evidence that medieval Christians believed in magic and practiced a form of polytheism with the saints as a kind of pantheon of minor deities or demigods. This veneration of relics still continues today in many parts of the world, especially among Catholics, and there's no doubt that every one of these relics is a fake. Next video is a news report from 2015.
Relics were valuable in the medieval world because they attracted patronage and pilgrims, a form of tourism that could greatly increase the wealth of parishes and monasteries. Some monks enjoyed the favor of the rich and weren't above fleecing their own flocks:
According to Nature (2007), "four Franciscan churches in central Italy claim that they each hold a habit of St Francis of Assisi, the friar who founded the Franciscan order in the early 1200s ... Every year more than three million visitors come to the major shrine of St Francis, a basilica in Assisi that hosts famous frescoes depicting the saint's life, and one of the habits said to have belonged to the saint." [Emphasis added]
When it comes to relics, the Catholic church hasn't changed much over the centuries.
I have to wonder how anyone knows that this or that piece of cloth was part of St. Francis's habit or that the bones of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory the Theologian are actually their real bones. Did St. Francis have a name tag on his habit? I'm not sure what happened to St. Gregory's body, but in the case of St. John Chryostom, his remains were scattered all over the Christian world in the years following his death. His skull apparently ended up in the hands of the Russian Orthodox Church -- it's apparently still on display at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. At least, they have a skull there. Who knows who it really belonged to?
"Today, the monastery at Vatopedi posits a rival claim to possessing the skull of John Chrysostom," according to Wikipedia, "and there a skull is venerated by pilgrims to the monastery as that of St John. Two sites in Italy also claim to have the saint's skull: the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and the Dal Pozzo chapel in Pisa. The right hand of St. John is preserved on Mount Athos, and numerous smaller relics are scattered throughout the world."
Unless St. John had four heads, at least three of these skulls have to be fakes. Most likely, they all are. Wouldn't it be hilarious if these various body parts turned out to have belonged to common peasants, criminals or, better yet, notorious heretics? Some of the smaller fragments may even be animal bones for all we know, bones that now play an important role in the religious tourist trade that specializes in conning the superstitious rabble.
Video from 2019. Note the way the worshipers kiss these relics and kneel down to them as if they have occult properties. If this isn't a belief in magic, I don't know what is.
Holy relics fall into various classes. First-class relics consist of the actual body parts of saints. Second-class relics are items of clothing or other objects used by the saint, while third-class relics are objects which have touched first-class relics, thereby absorbing some of their magical power. Dividing relics into classes like this makes it possible to create hundreds, if not thousands of new relics. In the case of the supposed crown of thorns, for instance, many of the "holy thorns" attached to the crown qualify as third-class relics while others are apparently first-class relics. All of these various bits and pieces of the crown could be scattered around different churches in order to attract tourists.
This kind of system led to a wild proliferation of relics. Any thorn could be presented as part of the crown of thorns, just as a common nail, suitably aged, could be said to have been used in the crucifixion. Back in the Middle Ages the church wasn't above calling rocks and random bone fragments part of a saint's skeleton, and the faithful would line up to venerate them, make donations to the church and spend money in the local community.
This lucrative racket went on for centuries and it's still thriving today. And why not? The authenticity of these relics can't be determined in any case. There's absolutely no way to prove that the crown of thorns on display at Notre Dame is the "real" crown of thorns, but it doesn't matter. The faithful will apparently believe almost anything is a "holy relic" if it's put on display in a golden case and surrounded with enough solemn ritualism.
Last month a Vatican corruption trial began which was described at the time as "historic." The corruption here was supposedly so egregious and high-reaching that Pope Francis himself took a break from cracking down on the Latin Mass and calling for more immigration to make sure that the trial proceeded.
The case sounds like something out of a Richard Condon novel. According to Crux Now, "The list of those being tried by the Vatican criminal court include a once powerful cardinal, an alleged intelligence analyst who used Vatican money to buy high-end handbags. and the man once tasked with putting the Vatican on Europe’s 'white list' for financial propriety."
Report from July 27, 2021.
"This will be the first time that the Vatican tribunal, made up of lay magistrates, will carry out a criminal trial against a cardinal of the Curia – the central government of the Catholic Church. The allegations against the defendants include misappropriation of funds, extortion, embezzlement, fraud to money laundering, abuse of office and violation of official secrecy."
Comment: I'm not familiar with this case -- I just read about it a few seconds ago -- but I assume that the cardinal and the other defendants are all guilty as hell. As an impartial observer, I've always thought that extortion, fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, murder, racketeering and sexual degeneracy are SOP at the Vatican. Like all other governments, the Holy See has its own criminal Deep State. The only difference in this case is that some of the criminals wear robes and weird hats (at least on ceremonial occasions) instead of Armani suits.
July 27, 2021.
This trial is supposedly a big deal because it's the first time the Vatican has brought charges against such a high-ranking cardinal:
"Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who served as chief of staff in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, is the highest-placed Vatican figure to face a trial for alleged financial crimes. At the trial that started on Tuesday, the 73-year-old Becciu and two former leaders of the Vatican’s financial watchdog are among the 10 defendants who are accused of offenses including fraud, embezzlement, abuse of office, money-laundering and corruption." Source: Bloomberg (July 27, 2021).
If you believe the news coverage, Pope Francis is a reformer who has been trying to fight corruption ever since he took office. If that's true, he's going to have to do more than just put a cardinal and various apparatchiks on trial. Becciu was allegedly involved in all sorts of sketchy investments and creative accounting, at the very least, but that's routine in big finance these days. If Francis really wants to solve this problem, the only way to do it is to completely eliminate the Vatican Bank.
Report from 2015.
This trial is just the latest event in an ongoing fight to clean up the Vatican Bank which has been going on for over a decade now. The next news report, for instance, is from 2013.
There have been so many of these financial scandals at the Vatican that it's probably safe to say that the problem is systemic. The Vatican Bank isn't corrupt because of a few corrupt bank officials, though it's certainly had a lot of them. The Vatican Bank is corrupt because it's a bank. The only real solution to this kind of financial corruption, aka business as usual, is to get rid of the bank itself, but that isn't going to happen because (1) it would mean a loss of sovereignty for the Holy See itself, and (2) the Vatican would lose a big part of its revenue.
The Catholic Church is a schizophrenic institution. It's a religious organization, but it's also a big business. Historically, the church has always been corrupt to one degree or another. Its sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages is a classic example, and the Renaissance popes, eg the Borgias, have a notorious reputation. The modern church is an independent state, one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, and it has all the problems that go along with being a secular power. Pope Francis's fight against corruption is doomed because he's just replacing one set of bankers with another.
Whatever happens with this current trial, we'll see more of them in the future. You can count on that. The corruption will keep making the news until the Vatican closes its bank, loses its sovereign status or starts hiring a more discrete and efficient class of money manipulators.
The Book of Hours is a devotional book popular with Christians in the Middle Ages. According to Wikipedia, these are the most common type of surviving illuminated manuscripts from the period:
"Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures."
These fantastic illuminated books are valuable collector's items today. "As a group, Books of Hours are arguably the most beautiful of all books," according to one source I found. "They are also some of the most expensive, with modest examples starting in five figures. One of the finest Book of Hours -- the richly illuminated Rothschild Prayerbook -- sold for a record $13.5 million (£8.6 million) in 1999."
Comment: Considering all the time, money and painstaking craftsmanship that went into creating these masterpieces, it's obvious that they weren't just simple prayer books. Books of Hours -- the more lavishly illustrated ones, at least -- are classic examples of conspicuous consumption. Back in the medieval world, they were a display of affluence, of discretionary economic power and the political influence that goes along with it. As hyper-expensive collector's items, they're still symbols of wealth, sometimes massive wealth as in the case of the Rothschild Prayer Book. This is more than a little ironic considering their content and Jesus' teachings about the "poor in spirit," but this tension between spirituality and earthly power runs all through the history of the Christian church.
These are beautiful books, works of art, but they're too safe, too harmless to be really interesting. Nobody would have gotten into trouble for owning a Book of Hours containing devotions presumably authorized by the church. I like my medieval books to be more dangerous than that. The most interesting ones were the grimoires and banned Bible translations that had to be hidden away on pain of death or banishment. Handcrafted books gave their contents a kind of magical power, especially in an age of widespread illiteracy, and the most powerful books were full of forbidden knowledge. Books are mass-produced today, but we still have forbidden books that can't be found in mainstream bookstores and have to be read more or less in secret. The public denunciations and rituals of secrecy surrounding these books give their contents an aura of dark energy that you'll never find in a mass market paperback.
Note: The Vatican is a sovereign state and one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. In other words, the Pope is literally a king. In a curious arrangement (maybe not so curious), the Vatican doesn't pay him a salary, but simply pays for everything he needs and gives him what amounts to an extremely large expense account:
"Aside from Pope Francis’ vow of poverty, the Holy See doesn’t provide the papacy with monetary compensations, The Irish Times reported. Instead, Vatican City provides all the needs and expenses of Pope Francis. The Roman Catholic Church then pays for the pope’s living arrangements, food and travel costs ..." (IBTimes)
"While Pope Francis may not be earning a monetary salary from his seat in the Holy See, he has extensive access to a sizable charity fund, which he dispenses to those who need it. In 2019, Pope Francis donated $500,000 to Mexican migrants seeking to reach the U.S. border, according to the BBC."
There's a lot of money in the Pope's charity fund -- hundreds of millions of euros -- most of it raised from donations by the faithful. Typically, only about 10 percent of it goes to the needy, according to a Wall Street Journal report back in 2019. The Vatican is apparently using the fund to pay down its deficit, "which doubled in 2018 to more than 70 million euros."
Pope Francis, despite his vow of poverty, has a net worth of two million dollars, not to mention his free access to the charity fund. Apparently, he can do anything he wants to with that (like helping to finance the demographic transformation of the United States). I'm not accusing him of being a hypocrite, but he's definitely living like a king.
Climbing the corporate ladder in the Catholic Church really pays off if you can make it to the top.
Video from 2013, the year that Francis became the monarch of the Holy See.
"With three more years to go until the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics and the re-opening date announced by French President Emanuel Macron, Notre Dame's restoration work progresses. After a long safety phase and months of work interruption last year due to the pandemic, all burned timber from the roof has been removed, and scaffolding has been installed inside the cathedral. As a homage to the heritage structure and 'the collective effort to rebuild Notre Dame', the Catholic University of America is building a replica of one of the cathedral's roof trusses in Washington D.C., using medieval techniques." Source: ArchDaily (Aug. 2021). More recent updates can be found here.
Report from Feb. 2021.
Comment: As far as I can tell, the investigation into the cause of the fire never really went anywhere. That's assuming, of course, that there ever was much of an investigation to begin with, something I really doubt (unless the results were suppressed). Back in April of last year, we were told that the fire may have been started by a cigarette or more likely an electrical short circuit -- and that was it. Even though the exact cause of the fire may never be known, at least publicly, the official story is that it was accidental. In other words, the story hasn't changed since the Paris prosecutor declared on the day after the fire that there was no evidence of arson.
None of this really matters, I guess. Even if the fire was arson and the French police caught whoever did it, they would've probably released him on bail the same way they released the guy who set fire to the Nantes Cathedral last year and recently murdered a Catholic priest.
The priest here is being as diplomatic as possible. See next video for a different opinion.
"Pope Francis cracked down Friday on the spread of the old Latin Mass, reversing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions in a major challenge to traditionalist Catholics who immediately decried it as an attack on them and the ancient liturgy." Source: AP.
"Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict relaxed in 2007, and went further to limit its use. The pontiff said he was taking action because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy."
Comment: This is clearly an attack on conservative traditionalism by the forces of liberal modernism that took over the Catholic church after the disastrous reforms of the Second Vatican Council. There's a lot that could be said about the results of those reforms and their role in things like the recent church scandals, but I can't write about that stuff openly in the current climate.
It will be interesting to see what will come out of all of this. If the pope is worried about the divisions caused by Benedict's relaxation of the restrictions on the Latin Mass, he should be even more worried about the divisions caused by his re-imposition of those restrictions. A lot of Catholics feel very strongly about the "trad mass" despite the moderation of their public statements. Some traditional parishes, I expect, will simply ignore these new directives and if the pope decides to crack down on their bishops and congregations as a result I could see this leading to a serious schism.
Bishop Schneider isn't alone in his belief that the ban on the traditional mass is an abuse of power. It's quite possible that many Catholic churches could end up associating themselves with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) affiliated orders and continue to practice the Latin rites in defiance of Rome. Whether this will lead to a full-blown schism remains to be seen, but considering the situation in the Vatican right now I think that would be a positive development.
I could be wrong about a lot of this, however. I don't pretend to understand all the internal politics of the Catholic church. Some observers, for instance, believe that the existence of the SSPX orders shows that a schism has already occurred. The next video includes a detailed discussion of the history of the dispute from an Orthodox Christian perspective.
"The Malleus Maleficarum (Latin for 'The Hammer of Witches', or 'Hexenhammer' in German) is one of the most famous medieval treatises on witches. It was written in 1486 by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, and was first published in Germany in 1487. Its main purpose was to challenge all arguments against the existence of witchcraft and to instruct magistrates on how to identify, interrogate and convict witches." Source: The Malleus Maleficarum.
"Some modern scholars believe that Jacob Sprenger contributed little if anything to the work besides his name, but the evidence to support this is weak. Both men were members of the Dominican Order and Inquisitors for the Catholic Church. They submitted the Malleus Maleficarum to the University of Cologne’s Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, seeking its endorsement."
According to some sources I've seen, the Malleus Maleficarum was banned by the church, but apparently this wasn't the case:
"While general consensus is that The Catholic Church banned the book in 1490 by placing it on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ('List of Prohibited Books'), the first Index was, in fact, produced in 1559 under the direction of Pope Paul IV. Therefore such claims are dubious, at best." (Ibid)
According to Wikipedia, "The Malleus recommended not only torture but also deception in order to obtain confessions: 'And when the implements of torture have been prepared, the judge, both in person and through other good men zealous in the faith, tries to persuade the prisoner to confess the truth freely; but, if he will not confess, he bid attendants make the prisoner fast to the strappado [see note below] or some other implement of torture. The attendants obey forthwith, yet with feigned agitation. Then, at the prayer of some of those present, the prisoner is loosed again and is taken aside and once more persuaded to confess, being led to believe that he will in that case not be put to death."
Note: Weirdly enough, the strappado (modified to prevent dislocations) has become a popular form of sexual bondage. There are lots of videos of the practice out there in case you're interested.
Comment: The Malleus Maleficarum has been called one of the most evil books of all time, but I'd love to have a copy of one of the early editions. These old books are beautiful and they're worth a fair amount of money.
Video from Jan. 2020.
The Malleus Maleficarum is obsolete, of course. These days we don't need a manual on how to identify witches, force them to confess and then execute them because modern witches freely confess their blasphemies on the internet and most of them aren't worth hanging. Not for witchcraft, anyway. I can think of other reasons to string them up, however.
"... France boasts a glorious and splendid Catholic legacy -- from the iconic Notre Dame cathedral in Paris to its status as one of the first countries to adopt Catholicism as its official religion. In fact, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the year 800, France’s history became inseparable from that of the Catholic Church." Source: International Business Times (2013).
It's hard to overestimate the importance of Catholicism in French history. "Established in the 2nd century in unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, [the country] is sometimes called the 'eldest daughter of the church.'" (Wikipedia) The church has been in decline for years, however. At one time the vast majority of the French population were Catholics, but that's not the case anymore. According to the IBT, only about 1 in 20 people regularly attended mass in France (back in 2013), a major demographic collapse.
The church isn't just losing people; it's shrinking physically. The Catholic News Agency reported this year that "one religious building is disappearing in France every two weeks." Some of these churches are being demolished or converted to mosques. Others collapsed, presumably from old age or neglect, while others burned down (it turns out that "two-thirds of fires in religious buildings are due to arson"). And some churches have simply been abandoned. The next video (2019), for instance, shows an abandoned church somewhere in France.
It looks like someone has been taking care of this church to some extent.
Catholicism is in decline, but evangelical churches are spreading rapidly in France. According to Evangelical Focus (2021), "Historian expert in Protestantism Sébastian Fath has issued the new data as of 2021 which confirm the shift of Protestant Christianity in France. In the decade of the 1960s, only one in ten Protestants identified as evangelical Christians. Now, more than half of Protestants attend a free evangelical church."
Report from 2019.
Protestantism has been in decline across Europe for some time now, but the situation seems to be different in France for some reason. According to Wikipedia, "a new Evangelical church is built every 10 days and now counts 700,000 followers across France." Protestants still only make up around three per cent of the French population, however. The bigger story here is the collapse of Christianity and religious belief in general in the West.
"Christianity, specifically Catholicism, remains the dominant religion in the Republic of Ireland. In the 2016 census, 85.1% of the population identified as Christian. However recent social changes ... have solidified the growth of liberal thinking in Ireland, particularly within the younger community. An Irish priest, Fr. Kevin Hegarty ... reported that there is only one priest under the age of 40 in the entire diocese of Killala; only two priests have been ordained over the last 17 years, and there have been no candidates for the priesthood since 2013 ... A continued requirement for children entering Irish Catholic owned schools to be baptized keeps the overall level of baptisms high, though the number of individuals practicing a faith or attending church is at an all-time low and rapidly decreasing." (Wikipedia)
Video from 2016.
Comment: If you ask me, the dramatic decline in religious belief which has been occurring in Ireland is more apparent than real. In a country where being a Catholic and being Irish were considered to be one and the same thing, where 90 percent of the population went to church every week, most people probably called themselves Catholics just to fit in with their community. In other words, they were Catholics because it was traditional to be a Catholic and their faith never went much deeper than that. Once the social pressure to conform let up, they simply dropped out altogether.
There are a lot of factors involved in the decline of Catholicism -- the aging out of congregations, church scandals, the spread of secularism, the liberalization of church doctrine, etc. etc. -- but I would also argue that Ireland was never all that religious in the first place. Being a Catholic and being "religious" in the sense that you actually believe in Christianity and church dogma are two completely different things. The sex-abuse scandals and their subsequent coverup turned people against the church, obviously, but the picture is more complex than that. One way or another, what we are seeing now is a kind of shake-out process where the true state of the Catholic faith is being revealed.
Whatever the reason, a lot of people in Ireland stopped going to church altogether. That's one trend. The faithful remnant -- the true believers, so to speak -- have also been turning to more "vibrant" evangelical-style denominations which feature lots of singing and swaying and musical stage performances that make their services seem more like tent-revivals than anything else. When it comes to the Catholic church in particular and Christianity in general, the current situation is best summed up in a 1994 book called The Dark Side: Thoughts on the Futility of Life from the Ancient Greeks to the Present:
"Philosophy has argued itself out of existence. Theologies? Devotees either adopt a defiant fundamentalism or abandon the spiritual life altogether."